As the loop between catwalk and knockoff speeds to a dizzying whirl, an Italian design house hits the pause button - with chic clothes manufactured to last long after the skinny (or is that wide-legged?) pant is dead. Laura Penny reports on fashion's answer to the slow food movement

If you have ever shopped at Zara or H&M, you already know that the fashion cycle is spinning faster. Designers are releasing collections more frequently and the manufacturers that water down haute-couture weirdness for the masses are picking up the pace - with trends from the runway appearing on retail racks in weeks, not months.

Fast fashion is big business. When skirt shapes shift from bubble to pencil at a style maven's whim, consumers must reshop or risk looking so last season. As Dana Thomas, Newsweek's style reporter and the author of the new bestseller Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Lustre, explains, this speeding-up is a triumph of marketing.

"They're going fast simply to sell you more new stuff," she says. "Remember this summer, when everyone was saying the dress is back? Well, they're gone now. Fashion used to be a conversation, an arc; you could get a jacket to update your dress. Now, dresses are so passé, you need to buy suits."

But some have chosen to swim against the rushing rapids of the schmatte trade. At London Fashion Week last spring, "slow fashion" was the new buzz term, used to describe eco-friendly designs. And Italian company Slowear has also embraced this seemingly anti-fashion ethos.

Slowear doesn't crank out quarterly revamps of their designs. Instead, it promises to keep producing the same classic, smart casual styles for men and women. Their shirts, pants, skirts and outerwear may cost hundreds of dollars at their boutiques in New York, Milan and Tokyo, or high-end stores such as Barney's and Harry Rosen, but they insist that you are paying for quality, not hype.

"We can reject the idea of changing the line every six months because we make such a high-quality product," says Emilio Paschetto, director of North American operations for Slowear. "There's someone else in the market doing fashion. We don't do fashion."

Founded by brothers Roberto and Marzio Compagno, Slo-wear is actually a group of four older concerns: the Incotex trouser company founded by their father in 1951, Zanone knitwear, Glanshirt button-downs and Montodoro outerwear - all venerable Italian outfits with decades of experience. (Fellini's cast members loved the Glanshirt line; Armani worked for Montodoro.) As Mr. Paschetto explains, when the brothers wanted to expand their business, they sought to acquire companies "with a similar ethic and history."

They were also inspired by slow food. Started in 1989 in Italy as a reaction to the spread of fast-food purveyors such as McDonald's, the slow food movement emphasizes eating local and organic, maintaining traditional regional cuisines and the connection between the plate and the planet. "Roberto was invited to one of those slow food dinners in 2000 and said, 'This is more or less what I do - focusing on classics and quality,' " Mr. Paschetto says.

Dana Thomas sees this business model as a return to classic luxury. Producers of luxury goods used to be specialists, elite artisans who did one or two things well. But the explosion of the multibillion-dollar luxury industry has led to a decline in quality.

"When things are made by hand and take an artisan four days, then you're paying for their time and expertise," she argues. "It's expensive, but it seems fair. When it's made on the assembly line and glued together, you're not getting what you pay for any more. What you're getting instead is marketing, hype and profits for shareholders and CEOs."

The way we dress now also has more serious consequences. As Ms. Thomas points out, a lot of designer products are the fruit of Chinese child labour, just like their cut-rate Wal-Mart coevals. And then there's the environmental ravages of disposable dressing. "It's like plastic water bottles," she says. "Will there be landfills dedicated only to designer handbags?"

Slowear, like the slow food movement that inspired it, is environmentally friendly - it uses natural materials and eco-friendly dyes, and has revamped its production methods to reduce emissions. Moreover, buying a classic piece you can wear for years reduces consumption at the source.

And fast fashion may have consequences other than the obvious economic and environmental fallout. Staying on trend also takes a psychological toll. "I just think people have had it with the incredible agony of making choices," says Barry Schwartz, a psychology professor at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and the author of The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less.

He argues that the glorious panoply of consumer choices, rather than liberating us, burns up our time and energy. Endless variety often leads us to make bad decisions: We oversimplify because we're overwhelmed by all of our options. And his studies have shown that even when we do make good decisions, we end up questioning them, as our "obsessive need to find the best ultimately undermines consumer satisfaction. What good does it do you to get the best pair of pants if you don't think you did?"

Unsurprisingly, Prof. Schwartz thinks Slowear "is doing a very wise thing," one that is likely to appeal to older consumers. He notes that stores such as Ann Taylor and L.L. Bean offer a similar service without necessarily touting it. "You know when you go in that there's a core set of things that you can count on."

Osmud Rahman, a professor of fashion at Ryerson University, agrees that slow fashion might appeal to older consumers, but he doesn't see this as the next big trend for younger shoppers, who "move from one image tribe to another and change their looks more frequently." As he adds bluntly: "If fashion does not change, then it won't be successful."

Conversely, Prof. Schwartz insists that fashion has always been "wasteful," and now "we just waste faster." Of course, he also admits that he has a typically academic disregard for matters sartorial."I wear jeans and a blue shirt, and I'm pissed off that I can't get the same jeans I got 20 years ago," he says. "If I'd known, I'd have bought 50 pairs and been finished shopping for life."

The anti-style T-shirtSlowear's classic polo starts at around $200 - but then each shirt takes two weeks to a month to produce. Fabricated in Biella, a legendary Italian textile town that has been producing wool since the Middle Ages, shirts are hand-made by six different specialists cutting patterns, stitching them together and sewing buttons and buttonholes.

THE BASEThe polo is made of ICEcotton, a patented fabric that took five years to develop. The material is made with exceptionally long threads of expensive Egyptian cotton - which means a higher-twist yarn that is durable and breathable, but can also sometimes cause garments to buckle and wrinkle. Slowear developed special knitting machines to produce stable high-twist yarn.

THE COLOURSlowear uses only eco-friendly dying processes that waste less water and produce fewer emissions. The polo is available in 24 natural shades; these tend to last longer and do less damage to the environment than fuchsia or fluorescent orange.

THE SIGNATURESlowear's polos differ from those of Ralph Lauren and Lacoste in two ways: They're more narrow and tailored than those boxy frat-boy favourites - and there's no little horseman or alligator on the chest. "We're more interested in quality than branding," says the company's head of North American operations, Emilio Paschetto. "There's no need to show off."

THE TESTSlowear's polo is not treated with chemicals. Each shirt is simply washed once it's finished and then subjected to a quality test before it leaves the factory. Shirts are measured, to ensure proper line and fit, and then steamed, to check their shape and colour-fastness. Mr. Paschetto says he's still wearing a black polo he bought in 1991. He also notes that his drunk brother put a polo in the dishwasher: "The colour faded a little, but the fabric was perfect."

Laura PennyLaura Penny is the Halifax-based author of Your Call is Important to Us. Her feature on consumer culture appears monthly in Focus.